1xRxZ
by Penguinator27
Summary: In a stairwell. In a closet. On a fire escape. To the roof. Escape will coincide with the sunrise. Written for CoL 2012.


1xRxZ  
><em>or<em> In Violet

The stairwell echoed with the pounding of numerous feet below them, which only spurred Heero and Relena upward faster.

"Carry this, and keep going." Heero wasn't bothering to whisper anymore, now that they'd been found out.

"But what about-?" She had taken the flashlight from him without stopping, but only because he had forced it up at her.

"No matter what, just keep going!"

Despite her suspicion that he was going to make some sort of charge at their pursuers, he stayed behind her, both of them taking the steps two at a time to keep up a lead.

The sound of her own bare feet against the cement of the stairs had been audible despite the breathy huffing and shrieks from below- so when the sound was suddenly overpowered, she knew it.

"Heero, I-"

"I know, just keep going."

After only one more flight of stairs, she realized that the additional- though identical- noise was coming from above, as she was confronted with its source. Two of them were lurching down the stairs before them, the whites of their eyes red with blood, their skin a pale chartreuse.

Given that Heero and Relena had been barreling up the stairs, and the two creatures had been shimmying down, they found themselves on the same landing. Relena was already being pushed through the doorway of the floor's entrance before she realized that it was Heero who had opened the door and pushed her through it. She turned around just in time to see him force it shut behind her.

Opening it immediately after, she only just caught sight of him disappearing down, into the darkness.  
>"Heero!" She was furious.<p>

"Hide!" He yelled it back at her.

She shut the door, realizing only after that she may have made too much noise. She slid down the wall so that she could stay hidden while she listened. It was dim in the office space she observed before her; the windows were on the wall opposite her, and it was sunset. The city's power outage left the floor silent without the hum of computers and the murmur of light bulbs. It made it easier to recognize the swing of a desk chair.

Her first instinct was to call out to the person, but she caught herself; it would be best to _see _who had just gotten up out of a chair first.

The shuffle of feet against the industrial carpet on the floor was hard to distinguish: was it timid, cautious shuffling; or was it unconscious, primal shuffling?

She caught sight of the shuffler's ballerina flats through a gap in the cubicles. She knew then that the shuffling was not caused by timidity or any sort of finer emotion.

Still trying to keep the noise she made to a minimum, she slipped into the nearest cubicle and began rifling through its desk's drawers. There was nothing with enough weight- everything was too small- until she flinched at the touch of a letter-opener. It had serrated- albeit dulled- teeth and a sharp-looking point. She listened again for the sound of the other. _Nothing_.

Turning around, she realized that it was because it had stopped moving towards her- presently, it was already arm's distance from her. It put its hands up, as if to take something from Relena. That was all it had time to do, however, as Relena jammed the letter-opener through one of its eyes. She knew it had to be done- she had watched Heero do it for the past few hours with objects of varying heft and sharpness.

The thing- it had been a woman, she noticed- slumped down toward her. Relena moved forward to catch it and sunk slightly under its weight. She lowered it to the floor gently, then poked her head above the cubicle wall to see if anything else was coming toward her. _Nothing_.

The nearest hallway leading away from the cube farm caught her eye, even though it was dark. She was no stranger to office buildings; hallways meant the possibility of a closet.

She was not disappointed, either- though it did take her groping along the wall on the dark end of the hallway to find the tell-tale doorknob. After checking the space for any other occupants with the light of her cell phone, she shut herself in.  
>Personally, Relena did not think that locking herself inside a closet at the far end of an office building was a good idea in the present situation. However, following Heero's instructions, especially the ones he'd issued in the past few hours, had surely saved her life.<p>

At least, she kept reminding herself of this as the minutes slouched by, though she couldn't tell how many, as she was saving her phone's battery and not lighting it up every time she felt curious.

It was only as she tired of standing that she realized she was still clutching the letter opener in her right hand.

_I guess it's best to be prepared_.

She thought it again and again to herself until she again heard the beat of footsteps coming toward her closet. She couldn't tell what they were coming from due to the blockage of the door, but- after meandering around in what might have been the cube farm (she couldn't tell from her dark space)- it started to sound louder.

She moved to the side of the door so that when it opened she would see the intruder before it saw her. Her hand braced the letter-opener for striking.

When the door finally opened, she lunged for the shape the head atop the taller figure the intruder posed. She was deflected, however, then caught about the waist, and pushed deeper into the closet.

It was the way her waist was being held and the intervals in between breaths that told her it was only Heero.

"Oh my- are you alright?"

"Don't worry, I'm fine."

"What were you thinking?"

"That I'd give them the slip."

Relena wondered where he'd picked up such a phrase. "And did you?"

"Yeah," he nodded.

"Did they-?"

"I'm just glad I found you."

With that, she became pinned between his lips, his chest, his hands, his arms, and the wall behind her. But she fought back.

"What's wrong?"

"What do you mean? You just took off on me."

"I fully intended to come back. And here I am."

"But you couldn't have known that this would happen- _for sure_."

"I knew-"

"You hoped!" She said it louder than she knew was safe. "But you couldn't have been sure. You could have tripped, you could have been over-run, and you were already outnumbered. You could have been bitten!"

Heero stayed still for a few moments, listening to her breaths seethe with fury. And then he went back to kissing her, more forcefully, to try to quiet her protests. It didn't take much for her to start kissing back, to start her hands moving up and down his torso- as if she were checking that he was still whole. It felt good to kiss her and to feel her body under his hands. He wished they weren't in an old server-closet- he wished they were a thousand places other than an old server-closet. But he knew the place he _needed_ to be: inside her.

"Heero, I-"

"Please." He touched her face. "Please."

She didn't resist as he pulled them down to the floor, nor did she thwart him from opening her legs to straddle his lap; it was the only way they'd both fit on the floor.

He knew it was not the time; she knew it was not the place.

But she still unfastened the buttons of his shirt as he reached up the front of her shirt and under her bra. The contact his fingers made with her nipple was like the flip of a switch. Rather than the adrenaline that came from being pursued- hunted, really- there was the hum of arousal throughout her body. She let Heero pull her sweater up and over her head; she needed to be touched, caressed, bitten-

"What's wrong, Relena?"

"I don't know."

"Did you hear something?"

"No, I just- I know what I want to feel right now, but it's not happening right."

"I'm sorry." He fished her sweater up off the floor and made to help her on with it.

"No, no. I want this. I'm just trying not to think about what's on the other side of the door."

"Don't think about it."

"It's not that simple. I wish we were in your room, or my room, not having to worry about running."

"Soon, you won't have to run anymore. But right now _you're_ here, and _I'm_ here. Please, Relena." He pulled her close to him, so that their bare chests touched, and she could feel him warm against her.

_This is what skin should feel like_, she thought, not the rigid clamminess she'd been exposed to recently.

His kisses felt aggressive to her at first, but she fell into them easily. His hands cupped her breasts, kissed and licked at them; he massaged her middle through the fine fabric of her dressy pants. When she felt the hardness in his pants she moved against it, and swore she felt him shudder. Though she was already topless, the space available demanded that her pants come off too. She resisted thinking about what it might be like to try to escape the building in no clothes.

It was tricky to manage in the server-closet; there wasn't as much room as they were accustomed to, so they ended up crunched together, Relena on her back, her legs curled around Heero's middle. She was wet and ready for him, but he continued his ardent kisses longer than usual, so much so that he surprised her when he made his first thrust into her.

But then everything else was gone. The monsters outside were gone. The helicopter that would be on the roof in the morning was gone. The woman she had killed only briefly before beginning to make love to Heero was gone. There was nothing but his fingers in her hair, his breath so near to her- nothing but his hardness stroking her, sometimes roughly, with the goal of coaxing a release from her. Because she knew he didn't have to do it; he didn't have to take his time with her. Time had been precious for the last few days- something that might always run out. But he alternated fast and slow rhythms, switched between kissing her neck and sucking at her breasts. He did all this for her so that when she came it was overwhelming. Just as it began, he covered the cry with his mouth, letting his groan of completion out into her also.

They stayed clasped together until they had both recovered their breaths and their thinking. When they separated, they helped one another collect clothes and fasten buttons, tender as they ever were to one another in bed.

Situated somewhat differently than before, they sat in the cramped closet in relative silence.

"I think you should try to sleep if you can."

"I'd rather not sleep here."

"You sleep, I'll keep listening."

"I'll keep listening too."

"You should sleep. You'll need it more."

"How's that?"

"When you're-"

"When _we're_."

"When _we're_ picked up tomorrow you'll be whisked back into duty, I know how you are. There'll be a million disasters and conflicts just waiting to be resolved. And you'll jump right in."

Relena could hear him smile in the dark.

"I'll depend upon my healthy adrenal glands."

They kissed, and Relena rested her head on Heero's shoulder. It was all she knew until she felt him shaking her gently.

"Relena? Relena, turn on your phone."

She awoke easily, not having been deeply at rest. The phone was in her pocket, and she found the power button with her fingers easily. She had half her battery's power left, but only a half-decent signal.

"Did you get any messages?"

"One from Quatre just a few hours ago. He said the helicopter will be on the roof at 6:30, in time for the sunrise."

"That means we've got to get back into the stairwell..."

"I was thinking about that." He paused to cough into the crook of his arm. "Since we're already inside the building, we should see if we can get out through a window; maybe there'll be a fire escape."

Quietly, they snaked through the cube farm toward the windows on the opposite wall. Certainly enough, only one of them opened, and led outside to a landing in the windy heights outside.

"You should probably take your heels off."

"Heero, I lost my heels in the stairwell yesterday."

He looked down at her feet. "Oh. I'm sorry." He shook his head. "Let's get going. You first."

They took the stairs slowly, and at a moderate pace, so as to limit the racket they made. It was difficult to tell whether their efforts were doing any good at averting the attention of those milling around on the ground below them.

Nautical dawn bled blue into the sky, drawing them upward faster at Heero's urging. Then—

"Relena, stop."

"Stop now? We've only got one more flight to go, Heero."

"I know." He sat down on the landing. "Just stop for a minute."

She walked down the few steps that separated them and squeezed next to him on the landing. "I think we're on the 27th floor now. Don't the Galaxy Towers have 28 storeys?"

He nodded. "I think so. You'll go to the roof?"

"With you."

"Not with me."

"What's that supposed to mean...?"

"I can't come with you. Even if I get in the helicopter with you, they won't let me go to the colonies."

"I'll make them-"

"You _can't_. I'm going to be one of them soon."

"..."

"One of them took a bite out of my calf."

"You said you were fine."

"At the time I was."

"You should have told me."

"What for?"

"I would have wanted to know- that's why I asked."

Heero pulled up the left leg of his pants and untied the sock that was wrapped around it; Relena could barely make out the dark splotch and depression where skin should have been. She reached out.

"Don't touch it." He breathed in heavily as he covered it back up. "Don't touch it. I don't know what it'll do."

Relena saw it then, as the sun crept closer and closer to the horizon: Heero's pallor, his heaving chest.

"What can I do? What'll I do?" She said it more to herself than to him.

"Get to the roof. Get off the planet."

"And you?" She sniffed back her tears as she turned to him.

"I don't know. Stay here, maybe."

"If you weren't already injured I'd hit you. What kind of an answer is that?"

"I don't exactly have much future to plan for."

"What about me?"

"Get to the roof."

"No- what about me without you?"

"..."

The first tip of the sun passed the horizon, and there was red and brightness in their eyes.

"You can't let them kill you. Don't let anyone kill you."

"I don't know that I'll be able to control myself." He had already leaned back against the railing.

"You've got to try- try to survive."

Heero took off his jacket with some difficulty and swung it over Relena's shoulders. "What about me without you?" He said it faintly.

"You've got to try; I'm going to come looking for you, and I expect to find you somewhere here. Try."

He nodded and they pressed their foreheads together.

"I'll never forgive you for this."

Heero nodded. "Relena, I-"

"Heero!" In the violet of his irises, Relena could see the blood vessels starting to break and cloud over all of his own colors.

The sound of blades chopping up the air above made Relena start.

"Go."

"I'm coming back for you."

"I... Relena, I-"

"Don't. Tell me when I come back." Relena started up the stairs to the roof. "I'm coming back for you."

In the last look she managed to get over the edge of the roof, she could see Heero staring into the sun, covering his mouth as he coughed. She tried to catch sight of him one more time from her seat in the helicopter, but it moved so fast once it took to the air, that she became disoriented, and couldn't find him.

**AN:** Uh, so, there you go. I started writing this as an entry in the Church of Lemons 2010, but never finished it. Zombies were starting to become _en vogue_ then. Seeing as they're still quite the thing, I finished it for the Church of Lemons 2012. I know the whole thing is really brief and out of nowhere. It felt like every word came out of me on a lark. I want to hear your thoughts—for good or for ill. 4/4/12


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